By Fr. George Dorbarakis
This blessed and holy Father of ours, Titus, from a young age loved Christ, went to a cenobitic monastery, and withdrew from the world and from his relatives. There he devoted himself so greatly to humility and obedience that he surpassed not only the brotherhood but every person. He also became a shepherd of the rational sheep of Christ and had such meekness and love and compassion as no one else among men. He was preserved pure in soul and body from a young age like an angel of God. Therefore the Lord also granted him exceptional grace of wonderworking, and thus he departed to Him, leaving to his disciples and fellow ascetics his ascetic struggles as a living pillar and an indelible image.
Saint Theophanes, the hymnographer of Venerable Titus the Wonderworker, wishing to characterize the great holiness of the Venerable one, uses as an example what happens with holy myrrh: it is composed of dozens of aromatic ingredients and substances in order to reach the height of its exquisite fragrance. In the same way also was Venerable Titus: “A myrrh of sanctification, O venerable one, you were wholly compounded from the fragrances of your ascetic life, into a fragrance of our God” (Ode 3). In other words, Venerable Titus is a fragrance of Christ, who is also considered by Saint Theophanes, in a spiritual sense, to be a disciple of the Apostle Paul, like that former disciple and co-worker of Paul, the Apostle Titus: “we praise you as a new Titus, a disciple of Paul” (Ode 1).








